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Decompression sickness (DCS; also called divers' disease, the bends, aerobullosis, and caisson disease) is a medical condition caused by dissolved gases emerging from solution as bubbles inside the body tissues during decompression.
Decompression sickness is usually avoidable by following the requirements of decompression tables or algorithms regarding ascent rates and stop times for the specific dive profile, but these do not guarantee safety, and in some cases, unpredictably, there will be decompression sickness.
The principal conditions are decompression illness (which covers decompression sickness and arterial gas embolism), nitrogen narcosis, high pressure nervous syndrome, oxygen toxicity, and pulmonary barotrauma (burst lung). Although some of these may occur in other settings, they are of particular concern during diving activities.
1868 – Alfred Le Roy de Méricourt described decompression sickness as an occupational illness of sponge divers. [3] 1873 – Dr. Andrew Smith first used the terms "caisson disease" and "compressed air illness", describing 110 cases of decompression sickness as the physician in charge during construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Bubble decompression models are a rule based approach to calculating decompression based on the idea that microscopic bubble nuclei always exist in water and tissues that contain water and that by predicting and controlling the bubble growth, one can avoid decompression sickness. Most of the bubble models assume that bubbles will form during ...
He was appointed superintendent of the RNPL in 1968 and soon thereafter was awarded his PhD for research into prevention of decompression sickness. Experimental work in the use of helium based breathing gases resulted in a record breaking chamber dive in 1970 by associated researchers to 1,535 feet (468 m), followed in 1980 by a simulated depth ...
A rapid depressurisation to the low pressures of high altitudes can trigger altitude decompression sickness. The physiological responses to high altitude include hyperventilation, polycythemia, increased capillary density in muscle and hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction–increased intracellular oxidative enzymes. There are a range of responses ...
Once it was recognised that the symptoms were caused by gas bubbles, [30] and that re-compression could relieve the symptoms, [29] [32] Paul Bert showed in 1878 that decompression sickness is caused by nitrogen bubbles released from tissues and blood during or after decompression, and showed the advantages of breathing oxygen after developing ...